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Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

theguardian.com

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Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#301

Post by dredmorbius »

rappatic wrote: post #136

> the Boeing 737-800 had just 220kg of fuel left in its tanks... enough for just five or six minutes of flying Maybe I'm just unaware, but it's crazy to me that these planes burn 40 kilograms of jet fuel per minute.

In commercial aviation (passenger/cargo), typically about half the take-off weight is fuel. That's not half the payload weight (pax + cargo + fuel), it's half the takeoff weight.

For a medium-range flight (say ~2000 mi / 3200 km) each passenger incurs somewhat more than their own weight in fuel.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#302

Post by baq »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #251
abtinf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively as an outsider, this situation seems like everything worked as intended? On a nominally 2h45m flight, they spent an extra 2 hours in the air, presumably doing doing fuel intensive altitude changing maneuvers, and were eventually able to land safely with their reserves almost exhausted. I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all. How much fuel should they have landed with?

I think a more insightful answer is how often is it acceptable for the reserves to actually be cut into. If this was happening often, then there’s a likelihood of a future disaster. As it is there is 1 isolated case that still ended with a positive outcome. I think it almost adds support for the current reserve levels to be pretty dialed-in.

The answer is 'never' as the reserves are only added for worse-than-worst case scenario, i.e. in this case something went literally unimaginably (as of then) wrong.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#303

Post by dredmorbius »

Schiendelman wrote: post #281
phyzome wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when people say "flying has a high carbon footprint", they're not kidding . It's really quite massive. I don't fly any more.

Want to bake your noodle? Because the market responds to your behavior by slightly lowering the cost of flying to fill those seats, demand increases to match from slightly lower income people. Because they then organize their lives slightly more around cheap flights, it gets even harder to lower the impact of flying. Paradoxically, rich people like us (you're a tech worker too...) flying more, because we're less sens…

Which is a strong argument for a carbon tax on (fossil) fuels. Indexed to consumption over greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Taxes are one way to make markets internalise externalities.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#304

Post by rz2k »

abtinf wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #23

That is very exceptional. I've written fuel estimation software for airliners (cargo, fortunately), and the number of rules regarding go-arounds, alternates and holding time resulted in there usually being quite a bit of fuel in the tanks on landing, by design. I've never heard of '6 minutes left' in practice where it wasn't a massive issue and the investigation into how this could have happened will make for interes…

Naively as an outsider, this situation seems like everything worked as intended? On a nominally 2h45m flight, they spent an extra 2 hours in the air, presumably doing doing fuel intensive altitude changing maneuvers, and were eventually able to land safely with their reserves almost exhausted. I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all. How much fuel should they have landed with?

This reminds of discussions following the Fukushima disaster where one commenter claimed that it wasn't a design flaw, because it was an extraordinary circumstance. I found this appalling, because I do not at all think that was the risk profile that was sold to the public; I think people believed that it was supposed to be designed to safely survive 1000-year earthquakes and the tsunamis that they create.

Likewise, I think that the flying public is lead to believe fuel exhaustion is so rare that when airlines are compliant with regulations, no such disasters across all flights across all carriers will occur during your lifetime.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#305

Post by inglor_cz »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #269
inglor_cz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"claiming they're low on fuel" It is almost fascinating how humans will stoop to dishonesty even in banal situations - and not just any humans, but pilots, who should be subject to at least some vetting. Maybe planes should be retrofitted as to transmit their actual fuel state including a qualified assessment in minutes to the ATC. Not just because of the cheaters, but also to warn the ATC in the rare case that some…

>If I designed such a system from scratch, "remaining fuel" would be part of my telemetry. Careful what you wish for. I'd rather people skip the queue by pretending to be low on fuel than people skip the queue by actually being low on fuel.

You mean that ATC would abuse their position by making planes circle as long as they have some fuel left?

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#307

Post by lawlessone »

whycome wrote: post #210
scrumper wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, article says they landed with 220kg which is around 6 minutes of average fuel burn over an entire flight - bit less at cruise, a hell of a lot more at takeoff/climb. So I don't think 220kg is enough to do a go-around in a 737 (well, a go-around would've been initiated with a bit more than 220kg in the tank - they burned some taxing to the gate - but you get my point.) I've read around 2,300kg for takeoff and…

[flagged]

ok, how do we verify that?

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#308

Post by mr_toad »

allturtles wrote: post #190
dboreham wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick note that Preswick is not really Glasgow (35 miles away) and Glasgow has its own airport which presumably was also affected by the same weather so they couldn't divert to that. Between the Scottish lowlands (where they had already tried all the commercial airports) and anywhere else, Manchester is about the closest option.

As someone totally ignorant of British airports, a Google maps search for "airports northern england" shows Teesside, Carlisle, and Newcastle all significantly closer to Edinburgh than Manchester. Are these not places where a 737 under emergency could land? Or was the weather also bad there?

Carlisle is a small domestic airport. The other two might have been affected by the storm as well. The weather was bad enough to down trees in London.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#309

Post by yieldcrv »

AceyMan wrote: post #68

Under FAA rules this was a screwup. [edit: see my own reply] (However, the rules are subtle, so they can be partially forgiven.) However, I'm not only a dispatcher but also a philosophy BA, so I've found a good way to explain it. Your reserve fuel (the "extra" fuel over what the actual flight burn) can of course be used (hello, that's what it's there for) but—and here's the rub—you can never plan on using it. That is…

in what way do FAA rules apply to operators doing a European to UK flight in an airline that doesn't operate in the US?

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#310

Post by nostrademons »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #296
nostrademons wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there's a lot of confusion in the comments below I'm going to hijack one of the top comments to make a couple points clear from the article and FlightRadar24 data: [1] They did reroute earlier. It was 2 failed attempts on Prestwick (Glasgow), 45 minutes in the landing pattern, then they diverted to Edinburgh (15 minute flight), a failed attempt at Edinburgh (~5-10 minutes), and then they diverted to Manchester…

To me the 45 minutes in the landing pattern also seems questionable.

At the point they left it, they still had about an hour and 20 minutes of fuel remaining, with an alternate airport 20 minutes away. They had not declared an emergency, so they were in with any other traffic waiting for takeoff and landing. (Which does make me wonder, did any other planes try to land at Prestwick at the time and how did they fair?)
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